Saturday, 8 August 2015

Marvel Pitches I Will Never Pitch

(This is the N'th or something outing for this title and probably won't be the last.)

The Marvel Heroes with Superman-Equivalent powers meet in a fortress made from a fluxion of magnetic force and nuclear fire on the surface of the sun. From there, they battle impossible things.

They guard an eternal Dawn from the surface of the Sun, making sure night never falls.

Could also be 'Light Knights' which sounds twee. But then they are superman characters and therefore ultra-simple ultra direct. They are all quasi apollonian types.

First Issue -

Jackson Pollocks paintings are direct transmissions of gigantic alien trans-dimensional gigastructures filled with light from a reality where they made up the cosmos, but his attempts at communicating them were flawed, in time the aliens grew angry and left him.

A time fragment eclipsed them but now it has passed and the paintings have once again become active maps to that now-dying cosmos.

Dark-carbon nazgul world eaters now predate there, along with kabuki-mask droid gods and the trans-organic ghost forms of doomed intelligent worlds. Intelligently aware noospehereic songforms may still be active as a form of transient dirge.

Even the simplest and smallest of these entities could pose a titanic threat to our more-mundane reality. This tragic alien cosmos must be sealed off, from the other side.

(In human terms, someone has to go inside a haunted house to lock the doors from the inside, except this house is an entire supra-natural cosmos immeasurably greater and more strange than our own.)

The power of entropy there is so great that only beings who were themselves virtual living generators of incomprehensible energies could even hope to survive.

That means Supermen. Luckily the Marvel Universe has a few and people don't tend to do much with them.

The Witch of Endor
The Mayan God Tll
Dionysus
The Lords Errant
The Future All-Female Dawn Guard
The Avengers of the World of Rice and Salt
Nature
The Goddess Night
The Underverse
Nullity
The Artist of Entropy

The series would be about a team of demigod-level beings operating almost at the borders of reality against threats so huge and impossible that more terrestrial-level heroes might not even recognise them. And it would be a marvel series about a team of people with mixed backgrounds and attitudes rubbing up against each other in unexpected and interesting ways, except this happens in a palace of nuclear fire that most beings couldn’t even reach.

BLACK BEOWULF

Luke Cage is lost in time. While he tries to survive and find meaning in a post-apocalyptic Britain somewhere between the fall of Rome and the Battle of Hastings, meanwhile Jessica Jones and his Kid search for him.

Present-earth battles a standard-issue megathreat so the customary cast of characters is oddly unhelpful. Especially a very terse Thor who refuses to discuss the issue in any way.

Jessica is assisted and dogged by a drunken and ridiculous Hercules who attaches himself to her quest out of a need for something to do (he too is ignored as a minor character by those involved in the much-more-important world-spanning events currently taking place). Hercules is both pathetic and insensitive and deeply tries the patience of Jessica with his rambling old guy bullshit. As her despair at her failure to find her husband grows, his bluff heartiness grates ever more.

In Anglo-Saxon England Luke basically becomes Black Beowulf, best friend to an aging yet honourable king, he battles ancient horrors to preserve the dregs of a culture that he knows full well will one day grow into a world power that both abuses, yet shapes, the cultural and racial matrix from which he springs. Throughout all his adventures his faith that his wife is looking for him, and will eventually find him, never dims. He tells everyone that his wife is looking for him from beyond time and, though people think its kind of ridiculous that a guy would need to be rescued by his _wife_, slowly the legend of the man hunted through the years by his lost love, spreads.

The monsters he fights are, in Marvel style, based on medieval and dark age myth but re-interpreted as mutants, alien technology fallen to earth, marvel magic and sometimes just weird shit. In this era, when Christianity is just slowly moving across the land and but the power of the central church is weak, there is no particular prejudice against mutants. The gifts of man are varied say the Priests and god puts where what he chooses, so if you can shoot fire from your eyes then it must be because that’s what god intends. Luke finds that the Devil himself wanders the land in person at this time trying to dick people out of their souls.

After (perhaps years?) of adventuring, a new and more terrible threat appears. Vikings, said to be lead by a living god. A force no mortal man can defeat.

In the present, Jessica’s relentless and creative detective work finally results in a lead, she finds evidence of Lukes existence at some point in the ancient British past, but she needs help to reach him.

Eventually Jessica yanks some time tech from *somewhere* and sets about trying to retrieve her husband. But the gates of time are barred, a gigantic electrical storm rages somewhere between this point and that and not even earths greatest technology can break a path through.

In the past, Luke goes forth to battle the rampaging Vikings. After initial success he comes upon the forefront of the horde and encounters.. Thor! But a early-teenage awkward dickhead Thor (bear stubble, no Mjolnir) who suffers under the tutelage of a cold father and expresses the ruthlessness and violence of a dark time.

Though he knows he can't win, he challenges the God of Thunder to a one-on-one wrestling match. If Luke wins the Thunder god will no-more assault the people of Britain.

In the present, Jessica breaks down. Having burnt all her energies, been rebuffed by every powerful friend (except Danny rand), stolen a time machine and having seriously endangered her relationship with her daughter due to her obsessive and relentless questing, she collapses on the roof of a New York brownstone during a major storm in a deep lament for the love she has lost and a husband she fears she will never see again.

Hearing this, Hercules is consumed by shame for his thoughtless and boorish behaviour, powered by a godlike sorrow as in times of old, he flies into a Demiurgic Rage. Swearing to set things right, he plunges into the time vortex to wrest the bolts of lightning with his bare hands, calling upon his father, the power of Zeus himself to break the doors of time.

In the ruins of ancient London Luke Cage calls upon all of his craft and skill in his battle with young douchebag Thor. Though nowhere near strong enough to take him head on he is wise and sneaky and manages to dodge and confound the Thunder God.

But Luke knows he is running out of time. Thor has never been beaten in combat before, he has never lost anything to anyone before and grows gradually more frantic and incredulous that this could be happening to him, and at the hands of a mortal man. Appealing to his father for aid, odin does nothing but look silently on. Though Luke tires, Thor has the power of a god, and does not and Lukes time is running out.

The two grapple, smashing through ancient roman buildings, at one point Thor slips and Luke holds above him the gigantic marble head of the Emperor Claudius. Though he has the god cold and could perhaps crush his skull, Luck can't bring himself to do it and hurls it away into the Thames (later to be found by river dredgers in the 20th century, so that’s how *that* got there.)

In the present Hercules, his body boiling with light, showing for perhaps the last time his ancient semi-divine power, hoists aside the lighting bolts of cosmic force, Jessica plunges through the portal and slams into the ground in the middle of Ancient Britain, seeing her husband about to be killed by Thor, God of Thunder.

In a desperate attempt to protect her husband, she throws herself in front of his battered body, preparing to take the killing blow herself.

But Thor refuses to strike. Truly tested for the first time in his life, he has too much respect for the man who opposed him, he declares the battle over and storms (literally) off, cursing his still-silent father.

Odin smiles secretly, his son has taken the first small step towards becoming the hero he will one day be.

Jessica yanks her husband back to the present in order to save his life, he never gets a chance to say good bye to all the people he has known in the ancient world and leaves only a strange legend.

On meeting Thor in the present it turns out he knew all-along (for the past 30 years) what was going to happen as he remembered it happening to him, he just couldn't mention it as if he allowed even one thing to alter it could change his entire timeline and therefore possibly change the whole world. Luke is prepared to let it go, Jessica remains unimpressed.

Last page smash reveal, Loki still has Luke Cages iPhone, and in the present day he can charge it too! Now he's tweeting as Luke! ULTIMATE MISCHIEF SCHEME.

BLADE OF THE IMMORTALS

First Issue -

The Shocker (Herman Shultz) is wandering aimlessly when he comes upon a bunch of dangerous thugs bullying and threatening a pair of Hobos. A plump asian guy (Li) and a sketchy stringy indian guy (Han). Herman decides to get involved and a brawl breaks out. Together they beat the thugs and, in celebration they start upon an incredibly cheap drunken binge across alleyways city-wide.

Herman bonds with his new friends, they are all older, slightly ragged men who have had difficult lives, and when Han checks the date on a thrown away newspaper, he reminds Li that he is due to meet his family. They insist Herman come along as they are convinced he is a 'good guy'. Eventually he submits and they take him along.

Li opens a doorway in an alleyway and together they enter the pearl-and-jade palace of taoist heaven. As they enter, their earthly guise falls away and it becomes clear that these are Li Bao, ancient chinese poet known as one of the 'Drunken Immortals', he has been banned from Heaven for 1000 years due to drunkenness and causing trouble, turns out that was on this day in 1015!

His friend is, of course, Hanuman, the monkey-god from hindu myth. None of the occupants of heaven are happy about this as they are from entirely different pantheons and really shouldn't be hanging out but Li points out that there is no law against it.

Too shocked and staggered to resist, Herman is lead deeper into the palaces of heaven until he comes face to face with the August Personage in Jade, who is less than pleased to see him. he also sees a fountain of heroic souls, a streaming pillar of white pearls, with every pearl representing a heroic soul. All the big marvel names are there, along with a bunch of asian people Herman has never heard of.

Below the sweeping arcs of the white pearls are the low tumbling grey pearls, the souls of slightly rubbish, broken or just very strange heroes.

The August Personage in Jade has called a conclave of heavenly badasses to discuss forming a team for an upcoming mission. A terror from another reality is threatening heaven and a team of heroes must be formed. The souls to be employed must be chosen and an immortal must take the pearls and bring the heroes together.

BUT IT IS TOO LATE - THE ENEMY ATTACKS

At that moment some terrible fucking thing bursts through the dome of heaven and, in Joesky terms, a brawl is on! All of the taoist immortals break into insane angelic kung-fu action, Li Bao lends a hand, even Hanuman chips in because hey, why not?

But they are clearly no match for what they are facing and heaven is getting pretty fucked up, Li Bao grabs Herman and drags him to a doorway. In his last moment he hands herman his jain sword and shoves something into his pockets.

"You'll know what to do."

Li Bao kicks Herman out of heaven and the last thing he sees before he falls is the form of the destroyer writhing blackly in the broken colonnades of pearl and jade and his new friends almost certainly about to die.

Then he finds himself lying in a alley in new jersey. He just saw the fall of an unearthly realm and no-one but him knows and no-one cares. In one hand he holds the sword, he reaches the other into his pocket and finds a handful of grey pearls, snatched at the last minute from the fountain of heroic souls.

End issue.

Can the Shocker, a low level hood, put together a team of broken heroes to storm heaven and save the only people who were genuinely nice to him in thirty years? Can Herman save Heaven?